ORPH.L Regulatory News (ORPH)

18th November2019

Open Orphan plc

("Open Orphan" or the "Company")

Open Orphan signs contract with Carna Bioscience

Open Orphan, a European-focussed, rare and orphan drug consulting services platform, is pleased to announce the signing of a contract with Carna Bioscience ("Carna") (www.carnabio.com)for a First In Human Clinical pharmacology trial. The contract is expected to deliver significant revenue for the Company over the next twelve months. Carna is a Japanese company specialising in kinase biology, developing innovative treatments against cancer and immune disorders.

This contract sees Venn Life Sciences ("Venn"), part of Open Orphan plc, provide Carna with a range of expertise from Chemistry Manufacturing and Controls to Clinical Trial Management as well as biometry, legal and regulatory support.

This new contract builds upon several years of existing work between Venn and Carna during which both parties closely collaborated on drug development planning and pre-clinical activities services contracts.

The contract is further evidence of Open Orphan's strategy to secure long-term partnership contracts which deliver recurring revenues for the business by working in close collaboration with high quality customers.

Cathal Friel, Chief Executive of Open Orphan commented:

"This contract is further evidence of delivering against one of Open Orphan's key objectives, transforming Venn. The contract is an exciting one as we are now providing a much broader range of pharmaceutical services and the Venn team have managed to transition the provision of its initial pre-clinical consultancy services to Carna into a formal Phase 1 Clinical Trial. We look forward to delivering the contract for Carna Bioscience and I look forward to announcing more positive news in due course."

Enquiries:

Open Orphan plc Tel: +353 1 644 0007Cathal Friel, Chief Executive Officer

Arden Partners (Nominated Adviser and Joint Broker) Tel: +44 (0)20 7614 5900John Llewellyn-Lloyd / Ruari McGirr / Benjamin Cryer

Davy (Euronext Growth Adviser and Joint Broker) Tel: +353 (0)1 679 6363Anthony Farrell (Corporate Finance)

Camarco (Financial PR) Tel: +44 (0)20 3757 4980Tom Huddart / Dan Sherwen

Notes to Editors on Open Orphan:

Open Orphan plc is a European-focused, rare and orphan drug consulting services platform. The Company intends to roll up a number of orphan drug services businesses. Open Orphan has two data driven digital platforms, a Genomic Health Data Platform, which is establishing a rare disease database and a Virtual Rep platform enabling pharmaceutical companies to engage key opinion leaders and physicians. The Company is targeting rapid growth in one of the fastest growing sectors in the global pharmaceutical industry targeting under-supplied treatment for life threatening or very serious diseases and rare disorders.

Notes to Editors on Carna Biosciences Inc:

Carna Biosciences is a biopharmaceutical company focused on the discovery and development of kinase inhibitor drugs to treat serious unmet medical needs in oncology, autoimmune and neurological diseases by inhibiting kinases that are important drivers for those diseases. Carna Biosciences was founded in Kobe, Japan, in 2003 as a spinoff of Japan Organon (Nippon Organon KK). Carna's initial focus was to develop an extensive number of state-of-the-art, highest quality reagents for kinase drug discovery, and has since established a leading drug discovery program with a significant collection of proprietary chemical libraries. For more information, please visit www.carnabio.com.